


End of the Road

by Neverever



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 1872, Marvel Secret Wars Battleworlds, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Western, Fix-It, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Pining, Revenge, Temporary Character Death, Tony Stark Has Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 13:37:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10968342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neverever/pseuds/Neverever
Summary: Tony Stark can't escape from the hell-hole that is Timely, Nevada. And he can't save Steve Rogers from Wilson Fisk.





	End of the Road

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MassiveSpaceWren](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MassiveSpaceWren/gifts).



> This was written as part of the 2017 Captain America/Iron-Man Reverse Big Bang. It was a pleasure to work with MassiveSpaceWren who did the inspirational art for this story and I hope that this fic matches what she hoped for.
> 
> The accompanying art for this fic can be found [here](https://68.media.tumblr.com/e9075adf1318a4c72c6c88b2ac711cc5/tumblr_oqdhyuMiui1uagjs2o1_1280.jpg) and the tumblr page is [here](http://massivespacewren.tumblr.com/post/160960910928/my-picture-for-the-cap-im-rbb-2017-i-love-rbbs%0A). It's beautiful -- check it out!
> 
> Please note that this is a fix-it fic for 1872, which, if you're a fan of 1872, you know what this is fixing.
> 
> Big thanks to the beta, Arms_Plutonic who was very helpful and most encouraging.

People didn’t come to Timely because they had other choices.

That’s what Tony Stark thought as the cheap whiskey burned his throat after taking a swig from his flask. He was sitting on the boardwalk outside his blacksmith’s shop in the early dusk, faint music from the casino floating in the air. The street was mostly empty. The good people were already at home for the evening, and the bad had found their way to the casino with its card games, people and alcohol.

Hank Pym, who owned the hardware shop, nodded at him as he hurried home to his wife, Janet. They had a small place at the edge of the business district, as the mayor dubbed the main street. Stark had lived in New York City. He was not particularly impressed with a bank, Pym’s hardware store, Banner’s medical office and apothecary, Murdock and Nelson’s law office, and the land surveyor/mine offices. You could throw a rock from one end of the street all the way to the casino.

He took another swig. Across the dusty street he could see the light on in the jail. Sheriff Rogers was working on some legal business or something. Then again, maybe not -- the latest Mark Twain novel arrived on the train this morning and Rogers was a fan. 

Stark passed his flask back and forth in his hands. Thinking wasn’t good for him, not at all. It either led to hours of work on futile inventions or back through memories he’d rather forget. And Sheriff Rogers, with his bright blond hair and eyes as blue as the sky and fine upstanding moral character, occupied far too many of those idle thoughts. Maybe he was just pondering how a man like Steve Rogers ended up in Timely to begin with.

Rogers had other choices, Stark knew that, even if the man had a hair-trigger temper. He arrived by train last year to be sheriff with his friend Barnes in tow. Still here like the rest of them.

Timely was the end of the road, the sewer that gathered up all the lost, miserable, hopeless, end-of-their-rope people who had made the mistake of passing through. Or thinking that they were going to stay a few days and go on to other better places where God existed and the sun shone in pleasant blue skies. But those few days always turned into a month, then months and years, and they were just as stuck as everyone else in that god-forsaken garbage heap.

Stark had lived there since the first shack and railroad tie. He had been dumped out of a stage coach at an ungodly hour of the morning, blinking in the harsh unforgiving sunlight at the dusty bleak vista stretching out before him. 

“Can’t stay here, buddy,” the conductor said, giving him a shove onto the rickety platform.

He came, he dreamt of leaving, he stayed. Then stayed and stayed, until Tony Stark was as much a part of the landscape as the tumbleweeds and the dirt and gray weathered wood of the town buildings.

To be honest, the town couldn’t function without Tony, who held two supremely important jobs -- one, the town’s blacksmith, who could fix any metal-based problem with his tools, and the other, the town drunk. Every town, even back in the civilized eastern seaboard, had a blacksmith and a town drunk. Timely was just being a model of efficiency by combining the two positions in one.

He took another drink and waited to catch a glimpse of Rogers through the jailhouse windows.

Good solid name for a good solid man. In all honesty, Stark couldn’t say enough about Rogers, who managed to keep the town running in these difficult and troubling times. Given that Roxxon Mining outright owned half the town and the area mines as well as the mayor.

An evening as fine as this deserved a song. Before Stark could sing his favorites, Rogers emerged from the jail. He walked across the street to kindly put a hand on Stark’s shoulder. “Join me for dinner?”

“I could do that, Mr. Rogers. Indeed I could.” Stark stumbled to his feet, pushing Rogers’ helping hand to the side. He might well be on his way to full drunkenness but he still had enough pride to walk on his own. 

They walked through the sheriff’s office and past the door to the jail cells that formed the main part of the building. Rogers lived in two very clean and tidy rooms off the back of the jail. He had already set out bowls and spoons for the camp stew heating on the hot stove in the corner.

Stark had spent enough nights here at the jail and in these rooms in Mr. Rogers’ company talking about books and horses and the weather. He pulled up a chair to the table for dinner and glanced around the room. Rogers barely had furniture -- only the worn table, a couple of mismatched chairs and rough shelves for storage. He had put a small pile of books and watercolor paints and tins with brushes and paper on a trunk in the corner. A picture of the late Bucky Barnes hung on the wall next to a wedding photograph of Barnes and his wife. 

But Rogers’ smile was warm enough to drive Stark’s demons and regrets into hiding as he set down bowls of steaming stew. 

He could only smile back. “I hear you got a new book today --”

“And issues of the Atlantic Monthly and Overland Monthly,” Rogers finished with a twinkle in his eye.

The moon had already set when Stark stumbled back to his shop. He drained his flask as he struggled up the stairs to his suite of rooms on the second floor. He couldn’t see the jail from here -- only the Savage Mountains in the distance during the day -- but he knew that Rogers was already in bed.

Stark never slept easy or well. Tonight, visions of Rogers ran through his mind instead of the ghosts of his past. Earning him a bit more sleep than usual. But he would have whiskey with his breakfast, and whiskey after his first couple of morning jobs, and whiskey for lunch and more whiskey for dinner. He’d think of Rogers going about his work and getting in and out of trouble with the mayor and the Roxxon goons and helping the good folk of Timely.

Rogers was too good for this town and they’d kill him in the end.

~~~~~

Fisk appeared at Stark’s shop door exactly at 9 in the morning with his ranch foreman. He was looking at this watch when Stark came in, blinking in the early light. He preferred to still be in bed, but he’d staggered to his feet because he had a business to run and people he mostly liked depending on him.

“Morning, Mayor Fisk,” Stark said. 

“Good morning, Stark,” Fisk replied, barely glancing at him. He strode into the shop with a self-satisfied air. “Horseshoes?”

“Yes. Here.” Stark pulled out the crate of horseshoes he’d forged for Fisk. Excellent work, if he said so himself.

The nervous ranch foreman, with no distinguishing features except that he was standing next to Fisk, examined the horseshoes. Stark watched Fisk instead. Fisk’s eyes shifted this way and that, taking in Stark’s neat and tidy shop, all his tools laid out in order, repairs lined up with attached notes, and his supplies in labeled crates and boxes. Stark might be the town drunk, but he still had pride in his craftsmanship. A tidy shop was the key to good work. 

“These are good, Mr. Fisk,” the foreman said with a note of awe in his voice.

Fisk only sneered at Stark. “Pay the man.” The foreman pulled out his wallet, peeled off dollars one by one for Stark’s bill, and grudgingly handed over the payment.

Stark counted the money. “This is only half.”

“Ain’t that a shame,” Fisk said with a shrug. The foreman hoisted the crate and they both turned to leave. 

“You owe me --”

Fisk snorted. “Consider yourself lucky to get even that. I don’t know why I bother -- you’ll just drink it down at my bar anyway.”

Angry, Stark followed Fisk out the door. But he didn’t say a thing more. As much as he wondered how Rogers ended up in Timely, Stark never questioned how Wilson Fisk ended up in town. Roxxon bought up most of the mining claims around the valley and brought in Fisk as their mayor. 

No one owned Rogers. 

Fisk stopped to talk to Rogers while Rogers tied up his horse, Butterscotch, outside the jail. Stark leaned against the automaton fortune-teller he’d built in his other life that now, like its creator, ended up broken and worn-down in Timely. He couldn’t quite hear what they talked about. But Rogers had a cross look on his face that quickly turned into a frown. Fisk turned to look meaningfully at Stark and then back to Rogers. 

“What’s that about?” Dr. Banner said. He had just emerged from Starnes Bank next to Stark’s shop.

“Don’t know,” Stark said. He took a couple of sips from his flask under Dr. Banner’s disapproving eye. People talked about how lucky they were that a real doctor from the East lived in Timely, that was, until they found out about Dr. Banner’s wrathful temper. There was a reason he had found his way to Timely, with disgrace and dismissals from dozens of jobs and a broken marriage in his trailing baggage.

Dr. Banner ran his fingers up and down the collar of his coat covering a green vest. “Can’t be good.” He narrowed his eyes as he studied Fisk. 

“Is it ever?” 

Widow Parker’s nephew, Peter, arrived as Stark finished up lunch. Ben Parker had died in a mine accident last year, leaving his widow to eke out a living on a hardscrabble farm on the edge of town. Stark probably should, but he couldn’t charge the Parkers for any of his work. He handed over the repaired rake and scythe. 

“Thank you, Mr. Stark,” the bright-eyed boy said. The Parkers had sunk everything they had into the farm, leaving them with nothing much. Peter worked far too hard to help his aunt raise crops and keep the chickens fed. 

“How’s your aunt?” 

“She’s fine -- she’s talking to Sheriff Rogers about someone harassing the chickens.”

Stark watched the Parker boy put the tools into the family wagon and run over to the jailhouse. Rogers ruffled the boy’s hair as he tipped his hat in a goodbye to the aunt. Rogers no doubt had promised to track down the chicken harassers. Widow Barnes, on her way to the casino, had stopped to say hello to them. She swung her hat back forth, red hair shining in the afternoon sun, occasionally smiling at a joke or story. 

In between jobs, Stark guessed. What Widow Barnes actually did to keep body and soul together was one of the open secrets of Timely. Many a stupid man and a few foolish women made that tragic mistake of thinking that Widow Barnes was one of the soiled doves who worked Fisk’s casino before meeting an untimely end.

All sorts of people flooded into Timely when the silver and gold boom hit the mines in the mountains around Timely, before they were nearly all bought up by Roxxon. There was a new sheriff nearly every other day until the town ran out of men who thought that they could tame the town. Fisk, a Roxxon man through and through, tried other options to controlling drunk angry men who had nothing to lose. Eastern newspapers had a field day after a shootout ended in the death of four men, including a Roxxon director, over a contested poker game.

Rogers arrived shortly after that. No one knew who had hired him, certainly not Fisk, not even the Roxxon company managers in town. He arrived by train, with only a trunk and his friend Bucky Barnes in tow. And he put on the sheriff’s star before he even moved into the jailhouse.

After all that, Rogers walked into the blacksmith shop, all shiny and sparkling like he’d been born yesterday. He introduced himself with a firm handshake. Stark had never met a man like that in all his years. You couldn’t tear your eyes off of him in a crowd or across the table talking about the latest news.

“He has that effect on people,” Barnes said. He and Sam Wilson, the station master, were standing at the casino bar with Stark in the late afternoon. Stark had already had his liquid lunch, but he never turned down a second helping if offered.

“That’s why you came here?” Wilson asked. 

“Been through a lot with Rogers. Couldn’t say no.” Barnes shrugged. “ What kind of place is Timely anyway?” 

“The kind of town where the town’s top lawyer is blind, but can still beat down five men in a bar fight,” Wilson replied. Stark had seen that fight with his own eyes.

“Huh, it’s going to be an interesting stay after all. Rogers has a way of finding the worst trouble.” Barnes downed his shot and slapped his glass on the bar. 

~~~~~

Early evening again, and Stark was sitting with a nearly empty flask on the boardwalk in front of his shop watching the jailhouse again. The calendar and Rogers rolling up his shirt sleeves told him that it was late August, but he couldn’t tell much beyond that. The seasons passed by with tiny differences, more heat in the summer, a touch of rain in the winter, a smudge of green in the of spring. Blink and you’d miss it. If he was back at his family’s summer house in Cape May, he’d know it was the end of summer from the sweet scent of cut grass floating on warm, ocean-touched breezes and the lazy hum of bees.

The thought of New York made him drain the last of his flask. Didn’t make a difference.

Rogers arrived back at the jailhouse with fill-in deputy Wilson. They’d been out all day tracking down a horse rustler. Stark figured it had ended badly for the rustler, considering the sadness in Rogers’ face. He knew all of Rogers’ moods that passed subtly across his beautiful face. These days the expression was either sadness or anger. 

Returning from her last delivery of the day to Murdock and Nelson, Miss Danvers said, “Good evening, Mr. Stark.”

“Good evening, Miss Danvers. How’s the post office these days?”

“Still in business,” she replied. 

“Well now, that’s the first sign of civilization -- a post office.”

She untied the ribbons of her hat to rearrange her blonde hair. Stark had seen her out at her ranch breaking in horses and herding cattle in shirt sleeves and trousers. Her uniform for town -- a staid blue dress and straw hat with red and yellow ribbons -- restrained all that vital energy like a moving cage. “That’s why I like the work -- I’m always looking for the next frontier posting. Alaska’s my next stop when something opens.”

“Alaska,” he repeated. He lifted the flask again, feeling a pang of disappointment that it was empty. Rogers had turned on the gas lamp in the jailhouse considering the golden glow in the windows. 

“He’s going to get himself killed,” Danvers said quietly. Stark looked up to see an appraising look in her eyes, like she was weighing options in a war. “He needs to be careful talking about the Roxxon dam like he’s been doing. Mr. Murdock is willing to file the lawsuits, Sheriff Rogers needs to be patient.”

“Rogers has the right to talk.”

“Mr. Stark, you have some influence over him. Ask to him to have some consideration for his safety -- we all love him, but he’s no use to anyone with a bullet in his head and six feet underground.”

He was fairly certain that Rogers had scant care for his own health and safety. He’d be a far different person if he did. “I’ll say what I can.”

Stark had significant doubts that he could persuade Rogers to change his mind once he had set it on something. He warned Rogers when he hunted down the men who had ambushed Barnes. Rogers fought Fisk over it and won a moral victory of sorts, but he never got his hands on the perpetrators. They were gone like the wind. Fisk had been unbearably smug over it all.

Rogers stayed. Any other man would have left to salvage his pride and mourn his friend and find greener, sunnier pastures. But Rogers stayed.

Did he have a place or family to go back to? No one really knew where Rogers came from. The only one who knew anything had been Barnes, who never said exactly how he met Rogers except ‘in the war.’ Rogers never talked about the war. Stark never asked.

That didn’t stop people from talking. The rumors were that Rogers was a war hero who had saved dozens and dozen of lives and had met the great General Grant himself at Appomattox. Why would a man like that stay here?

Stark lifted his empty flask again. He needed more to drink. 

~~~~~

A couple of nights later, a tipsy Stark showed up as usual like a bad penny late at night at the sheriff’s office to bother Rogers, restless and bored despite the ever-present book. He flopped down in the chair at the desk across from Rogers and oozed his charm. His spirits were high and he was feeling reckless and invincible for once. 

“Good day?” Rogers asked.

“Wilson hired me to make a tricky repair on one of the train cars. Interesting problem, actually. I then looked at Rand’s latest assaying equipment -- I think he got ripped off.” 

Rogers listened intently as he talked about his work. 

Stark never knew how they found so much to talk about, a drunk and a golden man with a hair-trigger temper. He poured the last from his flask into glasses for himself and Rogers. 

“To the late unpleasantness?” he suggested holding out his glass as some sort of toast. 

Rogers sat up straighter in his chair. “Sure. To the late unpleasantness.” He clinked Stark’s glass. 

“Your regiment?” Stark said, pushing his luck. He was the cat that curiosity killed. No doubt about it. 

“Army of the Potomac,” Rogers replied vaguely. “Enlisted before Antietam -- fought at Chancellorsville.”

“You were at Gettysburg?”

Rogers nodded, his mouth tightening up and body stiffening. “I was with the Army of the Potomac to the end. And you?”

Stark felt naked and exposed, but he couldn’t hide a thing from Rogers. “Bull Run. First.” 

“I know,” Rogers replied. 

They locked eyes, Stark staring into those unfathomable blue eyes now haunted by memories and ghosts as he coughed up that little bit of personal history. Stark had so many questions about what Rogers knew or didn’t know. The corner of Rogers’ mouth quirked up, a nervous tic likely. 

“How?” Stark stammered out. “Papers?”

“No, not the papers.”

Stark wanted to flee the room, the town and Rogers’ stifling, shining nobility and head off somewhere where no one knew him or his past. He came to Timely to escape the past, but the past had ridden in with him like his own pocket demon. He couldn’t and wouldn’t forget the horrors that his designs unleashed on the battlefield and that he had become a destroyer of worlds, not a builder of the future as he had dreamed. “You’ve known all this time. All this time.”

There was tiny seed of courage still left in his body, long buried by regret and grief and years of drink. “No questions for the merchant of death?” he said, waiting for the words to sink in for Rogers and for Rogers to throw him out.

“That was then and this is now -- it was a terrible war and it’s in the past. We have other battles to fight.”

Nothing more to say after that. Stark didn’t want to talk about the past, and Rogers sure as hell didn’t. 

Rogers got up and picked up a bundle of tied-up papers from the floor. “Here -- the latest New York Times and some Chicago papers, too. I figured you might want some new reading material.”

Stark could only be grateful to Rogers for thinking of him. Despite all he did to forget the past, he still yearned desperately to hear of new discoveries and scientific advancement. He’d take what he could get.

It was far too late in the evening as Stark stumbled to his feet, ready to make the long journey across the street to his own place. Rogers caught him, his hands hot on his arm and back. Stark stilled for a minute, feeling a clarity he hadn’t in ages. For once Rogers’ smile was soft and eyes fond as he looked at Stark. 

His glance dipped down to Rogers’ lips. Rogers was holding his breath, he was holding his own. One move either way and they would break to pieces from the intensity.

Rogers coughed, breaking the moment. “You should stay here tonight.”

Stark slumped a bit, biting back a sudden pang of vast disappointment. He nodded, his head now swimming. He had long ago lost the ability to say no to Rogers. He had done this too many times, slept here when the effort to walk across the street to home was too much.

Usually Rogers poured him into bed unconscious and left him there. He fell into a fitful sleep, wondering where Rogers would sleep tonight. He tossed and turned and cracked an eye to see Rogers sitting by the bed. Rogers was sketching in the moonlight that streamed through the window. Sitting there in the silvery light like an angel condemned to walk the earth. Not noticing that Stark was awake, Rogers reached out to brush back Stark’s hair and sighed. He shut his notebook, closed his eyes, and fell asleep in his chair.

The next morning, Stark woke up with a pounding head, one of Widow Parker’s quilts draped over him and a flat pillow under his head. He could hear Rogers walking around and the rattle of the stove. He’d better get up and get on with the day. He had done this too many times, so he knew what was waiting for him -- a nice hot breakfast and coffee with a concerned Rogers. 

And he should be grateful that Rogers knew who he was and what he did and didn’t seem to judge. 

~~~~~

“Why’d you come here?” Barnes once asked Stark at the casino bar one afternoon. He was killing time before meeting Miss Romanov at the courthouse. Rogers and Wilson had been roped into setting up chairs and tables for the reception by Mrs. Pym. She had somehow trusted Stark to not lose or damage the bridegroom.

Stark shrugged at Barnes’ question and toyed with his glass. He probably should be worried that he couldn’t tell the difference between straight whiskey and the slop they cut with water. “Why I stayed is the real question, I guess.”

“Why did you stay?”

Nightmares. Nothing left to lose. Punishment for all his sins. All those and more, Stark thought. “Best bar in the west,” he quipped. 

“Right.” Barnes hadn’t touched his whiskey. “I figure me and Natasha will stick around for a few months, see how Steve is doing, and then we’ll head out to California.”

“That’s a nice plan,” Stark said. Lots of people had told him the same tale over the years, so he had a healthy skepticism that Barnes would escape.

Barnes only smiled in return. He didn’t stop smiling all through the short ceremony at the courthouse and the party afterwards. Mrs. Pym had pulled out all the stops for the party and had set up a dance floor with tables and a band on the edge of town, at the perfect spot to see the Savage Mountains turning purple as the sun lowered in the sky. Nearly everyone had turned out for the social event of the year, except for Fisk and a handful of Roxxon people.

Stark sat at a table, bottle at hand, watching his fellow townspeople swirl around him and the glowing lanterns that ringed the dance floor swaying in the light breeze. Mrs. Pym had scraped up a band of sorts from the townspeople, which wasn’t terrible, as Stark’s toe-tapping testified. Dressed in her most stylish dress and hat, she led her reluctant husband around the dance floor. She had never had such a triumph.

Rogers danced with the new bride in the warm, golden, late-afternoon sunlight. He shone in a new blue vest and crisp, white shirt and polished gold star, every inch the sheriff even at his best friend’s wedding where he was the best man. Stark’s heart ached to see Rogers move awkwardly as the new Mrs. Barnes laughed with him. He never smiled like that during the week, completely at ease and peace with the world. 

He took Stark’s breath away.

“You should be out there,” Mrs. Pym announced as she sat down next to him. She smoothed down her skirt and pushed ribbons and sleeves into place. 

“I’m fine here, Jan,” he replied, his eyes still following Steve Rogers shuffling around the dance floor.

“Tony, have a little fun. Plenty of people to dance with.” She reached out to comb his hair into place and then tied his ever-untied bowtie. “Make a little effort and you’re a handsome man. You might even catch --” She bit her tongue before saying anything else. 

No one could really say no to the popular and vivacious Mrs. Pym. She and Dr. Banner were the closest to having friends that Stark had, besides Rogers. She gave him another small push and he was on his feet, stumbling towards the vision that was Rogers. 

“Can I have this dance?” he blurted out.

“I’ll have to check my dance card first,” Rogers teased. “You might get lucky.”

Stark laughed. Something about the crinkles around Rogers’ eyes and the warmth of his hand in his erased all the misery and the burdens of his terrible past. A different man, with purpose and hope, maybe even worthy of Rogers’ respect and regard, stood in his place as Rogers took his hand.

“I’m not used to not leading,” Stark confessed.

“I’m not good enough at dancing to notice,” Rogers admitted.

They settled on swaying back and forth, Rogers being careful to not step on Stark’s toes. “This okay?” he asked. 

“Fine by me,” Stark replied.

The full moon was now shining in the darkening sky above them, the breeze sweet and the music not hideous. Stark stood straight and strong, not feeling the need to drink for the first time in days. Rogers’ lips were curled in a smile as they turned around the dance floor. They have could have danced forever as far as Stark was concerned. But Danvers cut in, and they both were too polite to deny her.

Stark watched Rogers sweep away from him and felt the darkness of his life fall on him like a curtain. He’d dance again that night but not with Rogers. His evening would end with Cage and Rand dragging him home. But he’d never forget those few precious moments shuffling along with Rogers. 

Soon all he would have would be those memories.

Rogers started a war he wasn’t going to win. He had thrown a bomb in Fisk’s direction over Red Wolf and the dam. And the smart money was on Fisk to win it all.

~~~~~

He would remember that day until the day he died, even down to all the horrible mundane details. He remembered the customers he had that morning. Rand wanted some scales fixed. He sold nails to Pym and talked to Banner about the dam. Cage, sent by Wilson, asked him about looking at the railroad rails that might be warping with the heat. 

The heat was stifling, and the breeze brought no relief, only a blast of hot air as it raced across the skin. Stark sat down on the boardwalk, full flask in hand. He nearly choked on the dust from the main street. But it was miserable to stay inside as much as it was to sit outside.

His eyes narrowed as Fisk’s hired hitmen gathered at the end of the street. People knew what was going to happen. Hell, Rogers probably knew too. But he believed he was going to beat the odds and win. That’s all he needed to fight for the people who depended on him to do the right thing to protect them from the evil in the world.

Rogers nobly walked into the street, ready to fight to the death and willing to lay his life on the line. The gunfight was swift and brutal. And Stark’s heart stopped when he saw Rogers fall backwards with a grunt and a red stain spreading on his chest.

Stark couldn’t breathe. He had talked glibly about Rogers risking death. But in all honestly he didn’t think that Rogers would actually be killed. Tears filled his eyes.

He invoked a god he hadn’t believed in for years. But he was the most desperate man in the world at that moment. “Please, God, I’ll stop drinking. I’ll build my company again and give money to widows and orphans and the disabled. I’ll go to church and pray again and be an upstanding citizen. I’ll do all that if Rogers lives. God, he deserves to live more than me.” Stark begged over and over again, his hands shaky and unsteady on his thighs and blinded by tears.

Rogers didn’t move. Silent as the grave. 

Stark ran out into the street waving the one gun he could put a hand on. Misses Knight, Wing, and Jones grabbed at his coat and arms. “Don’t throw your life away,” Miss Knight hissed in his ear. They dragged him, shouting and fighting, back into his shop. Miss Wing stood watch in case he tried something foolish like track down Bullseye to avenge Rogers. Misses Knight and Jones had to repeat the news that Rogers was in fact dead. 

He nodded as if he understood and climbed the stairs to his room. “Do you think he’s going to ever leave his room?” Miss Wing asked. Stark could hear their whispers in the hall.

“He’ll have to. We’ll need him.”

Stark drank everything he could put his hands in his room. But he still woke up alive in the morning. He dried his tears, found clean clothes and tied his bowtie. He had nothing now. Nothing to look forward to again in life. He set his shoulders and drew a deep breath. He had a funeral to arrange and business to settle, unless Widow Barnes already had matters in hand. 

He walked down his stairs, into his shop and straight out the door to the casino. He slammed his money down on the bar and demanded the best liquor he could buy. He now had one goal in life -- to drink himself to death to forget that he had just stood there and did nothing as he watched the best man he had ever known be killed. To forget that he ever met Steve Rogers and all the rotten things he had done in his past and the complete and utter failure he was now. What kind of man was he that he couldn’t provide the least bit of assistance to his friend when his friend needed it most? 

Dr. Banner and Miss Danvers finally dragged him away from the bar. “Tomorrow will be better,” Danvers said as they tried to get him into his rooms above his shop. 

“He’s dead and gone and nothing will ever be better,” Stark said through gritted teeth. “Or good and true again.” The words painfully tore through his throat and his head was swimming. 

“Please, Mr. Stark,” Miss Danvers pleaded. She efficiently took his coat and waistcoat off, bothering to fold them before setting them on a chair. Dr. Banner assisted in removing his shoes and helping Stark into bed. 

“I did nothing for him,” Stark said as the tears began to flow again. “Rogers spent months hunting down the people who killed Barnes. I didn’t even say a word --”

Miss Danvers pressed a cold cloth to his forehead to wipe away the tears and sweat. “Mr. Stark, do pull yourself together. It will not help the living or the dead if you carry on this way. Take each day as it comes and we will all find a way to avenge Sheriff Rogers. But we cannot do that if you are in your grave.”

Stark stared up at the ceiling. He had thoughts and ideas and plans he hadn’t had in years. His workshop should be adequate for the work he needed to do. He didn’t care if he lived or died as long as he took down Fisk for Rogers.

~~~~~

Widow Barnes stood by Stark as they talked to the undertaker. So many details and Stark was quickly overwhelmed. Everyone knew that Stark had been one of Rogers’ closest friends. Wilson would have been there but for the railroad. Daniel Drumm of Drumm and Drumm Undertakers gently led him through the arrangements.

Their biggest problem in the end was that in all the confusion, Rogers’ body disappeared without a trace left behind. No one knew where it was. Fisk denied all knowledge and said that he would willingly have told Stark and Wilson if he knew where the body was. He was not a stupid man. He had wanted Rogers dead and he didn’t need rumors spreading like wildfire that Rogers was alive and was going after him. Timely needed peace and a reliably dead sheriff.

“Closed casket it is,” Stark agreed.

It didn’t matter if Rogers was Catholic or not, there was only one man of God in Timely and he married and buried anyone who needed it. Stark, who had not stepped into a church willingly in years, wore his best suit and sat in the first row of the town church on one of the hottest days of the year. 

The townspeople sat on hard wooden benches and fanned themselves in the hot stifling church as Preacher Castle presided over the funeral. He bellowed out a very admirable fire and brimstone sermon about the wages of sin and the promise of everlasting hellfire awaiting unrepentant sinners. He called God’s vengeance upon the unholy and demanded that the townspeople repent. Stark didn’t find the sermon at all peaceful or comforting. Rogers definitely wouldn’t have.

Afterwards, Widow Barnes and Miss Danvers kindly stood by him as townspeople filtered past him, shaking his hand and murmuring condolences. Miss Danvers patted his arm and asked him if he was holding up, while Widow Barnes studied everyone for signs that they had aided and abetted Rogers’ murderers. Then they listened to hymns as the empty casket was lowered into the ground in the cemetery beyond the town and the railroad.

Dr. Banner was sent to fetch Stark from the new grave at the end of the day when it was clear he had not returned home.

“He should have a proper gravestone,” Stark muttered as he ran a hand over the fresh-cut wood marker. Someone had carved ‘Steve Rogers, 1842 to 1872’ and a large star into the wood. The minimal statement felt obscene. Rogers had been so much more.

“In time,” Dr. Banner replied, rubbing Stark’s shoulder. 

“I won’t be here to see it,” Stark admitted.

“Oh?”

“Because I’m going to die taking down Fisk and Roxxon and all that they stand for,” Stark vowed in the quiet twilight settling down on them. 

“You’ll have help with that, Mr. Stark.”

~~~~~

After Rogers’ death, it fell apart. Not that Stark was in any shape to stop people fleeing Timely for fear that lawlessness was taking hold in the town. 

Butterscotch wandered off in the night after the funeral from his new stall behind Stark’s workshop. Stark couldn’t find him anywhere and no one would admit to stealing the sheriff’s horse. Wilson only shrugged when Stark asked if he had Rogers’ horse.

Then someone stole all Rogers’ belongings from the sheriff’s office before Stark could move them. Stark had carefully packed up the pitiful collection. He had been shocked to find that Rogers had nothing really, only his medals and papers from the Army in a small wooden box, a few books, a sketchpad and pencils, a pile of worn clothes. A summation of a good man’s life that barely filled half a trunk. And then someone stole it all. 

Stark was worse than useless if he couldn’t manage to protect Rogers’ clothes from a thief. Dr. Banner muttered something dark and hellish about the fate of people who wouldn’t leave the dead at peace. 

But he had something new to fill his time. Stark slaved away in his workshop on the machine that would avenge his friend. He ate and slept just enough to keep working. He had not built something like this since the war and he took to it like a fish to water. He had missed this, fashioning metal according to the ideas in his mind, testing his inventions and fixing things when they didn’t work. 

He was building the machine he’d be buried in. All that mattered was that he did what a person ought to do, had to do if he was to be respected -- avenge his best friend and the only man who cared for him and put his murderers into the same hard, cold ground. 

~~~~~

Wilson showed up in the shop before dawn a month after Rogers was killed. He shook Stark awake less than gently, although Stark heard him arrive when he tripped over a pile of empty bottles. Stark propped himself up on one elbow, blinking in the dim light of the room. 

“What --?”

“Get going,” Wilson ordered, throwing clothes at Stark’s head. “We have to be out of here before sunrise.”

“If you don’t mind if I look less than presentable --”

“I don’t care if you go naked. I was told to get you and that’s why I’m here.”

Wilson slung him onto the back of his horse tied up at the back of Stark’s shop. “Can’t be seen,” he explained.

Honestly, Stark had never given much thought to what lay outside the orbit of the railroad. He had been long convinced that beyond the tiny town and the nearby so-called ranches lay the land of death, and he’d never been tempted to try his luck. Wilson made a beeline for the scrublands and the Savage Mountains beyond the Kirby River over Stark’s protests.

“Shut up, Stark,” he snapped after Stark complained about the rough ride.

They had been riding for about an hour and were now at the Roxxon Silver Mines. Wilson kept riding straight into the mountains, following a faint trail, until they reached a miner’s shack nearly hidden in shadows behind a fence of prickly-pear cactus. Might have been one of Clint Barton’s old haunts. 

“This seems to be quite a long way to go to see something we could see in town,” Stark groused as he was finally allowed to dismount.

Wilson eyed him critically and only shook his head, deciding against saying anything. He tugged at Stark’s coat and Stark followed him into the shack. Widow Barnes was there with Red Wolf in the front room of the shack. Well, calling it the front room was generous -- a sort of bedroom had been created by tacking up an old, faded quilt across one end of the shack so there were effectively two rooms. 

“Why am I here?” He glared at Wilson, then at Widow Barnes and Red Wolf. He didn’t need any of this.

Widow Barnes put her hand gently on his shoulder and pointed her head towards the curtain. “Go on, Stark.”

He was a man with nothing to lose. Not that he thought that they would be setting up him for murder, but the past month had frayed his nerves and he had reasons not to trust people. He tentatively pushed the curtain aside, feeling her eyes on him. 

The breath caught in his throat as he saw Rogers fast asleep in the bed. His left shoulder was bandaged up tight. Stark stood there, struck dumb. He saw a miracle in a land that never could even hope to see a miracle. 

He turned to her. “What is going on?”

Widow Barnes pulled him away from the bed. “Shhhh. He’s resting now.”

Stark dropped his voice. “I saw him killed --”

“He got better,” she whispered with a slight smile. “Red Wolf and I thought he had died too, but we didn’t want Fisk to have Rogers’ body. We moved him during the uproar. He was still breathing, so we thought we had a chance to save him.”

“Did Banner know?”

“No, we went to Red Wolf’s people. I don’t trust anyone in town. Fisk has his eye on all of us.”

Stark took a deep breath. “But you sent for me.”

“Rogers woke up a couple of days and asked for you,” she confessed. “Wilson put his neck out to get you -- he said that you’d be best thing for him.”

“I can stay?”

“I was counting on it.”

“Where’s Barton?” Stark asked, assuming that this was Barton’s shack. The fiercely independent miner carefully guarded the location of his small handful of mining claims, lying low to avoid Roxxon.

“He’s keeping watch for us.” She strapped on another gun and tucked the bottom of her pants into her boots. “I have business to attend to. Keep him safe.”

Stark sat by Rogers’ bed during the longest day of his life, watching his friend toss back and forth on the narrow bed. Even at rest, Rogers was fighting something and someone. Maybe he was beating back Death from claiming him. He waited desperately for Rogers to wake and tell him he’d be okay. That they would go back to the way things had been with Stark in his shop and Rogers in the jailhouse and their dinners and talks. He never knew he would ever miss Rogers’ stew more than all the fancy food he’d eaten in a different lifetime in New York.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when Widow Barnes put a hand on his shoulder. “How is he?” 

“He’s restless but not waking,” Stark replied, fear in his voice. Rogers might be clinging to life, but that didn’t mean that he would win the battle.

“We set up a cot for you. Come and get some sleep. Red Wolf and I will watch over him.”

~~~~~

When he woke in the morning, Stark didn’t feel like he had slept at all. Red Wolf had moved the rickety table and chairs out the door to make room for Stark’s cot. All that did was leave some room in the shack for people to come and go during the night. Stark heard it all, even Barton’s harsh whisper when he reported in.

Stark worried that someone would miss him in town. But Widow Barnes told him Wilson was covering for his absence as she handed over his breakfast of eggs and toast cooked over the campfire. The strangeness of eating outside under a mesquite tree, in the shade of the mountains, hiding out from Fisk and with Rogers recovering from being nearly dead hit him hard. Barnes, Barton and Red Wolf acted as if the situation were completely normal.

“Banner says that there’s a way to blow up the dam,” Barton said. 

“We blow up the dam and all hell will break loose -- we have to time it perfectly so we can take out Fisk and his men -- all of them,” Widow said. 

“It wouldn’t take much to destroy that small dam,” Stark pointed out.

“I’ve been sneaking explosives from Roxxon. Want to check out the supply? It might be enough,” Barton said.

Stark glanced involuntarily at the shack where Rogers still lay sleeping. Red Wolf nodded at him. “We will get you.”

Widow Barnes and Red Wolf had put together a very simple plan to get everyone what they wanted -- blow the dam up for Red Wolf, take Fisk and his hired goons out for her and Stark, and knock Roxxon down a peg or two for Barton. 

“I’ve been waiting for this,” she explained as Stark calculated the firepower of Barton’s explosive stockpile hidden in an abandoned mine. “Fisk had my husband killed when Bucky uncovered Roxxon’s fraud to steal mining claims.”

“Like mine,” Barton growled.

Stark stood and brushed the dirt off his pants. “It’s enough -- but I’d be happier if you could steal a few more crates of explosives.”

“Will do.”

Tow-headed Barton wanted to talk about blowing up the dam but Stark felt itchy, thinking back on Rogers asleep back in the shack. 

“Go on,” Barton told him.

When he got back to the shack, he found Rogers propped up in the bed on folded pillows. His hair flopped in his eyes and he looked far too pale to be entirely healthy. But he was smiling weakly at Stark. The others tried to shuffle quietly out of the shack. 

Stark stumbled over to sit on the bed. “You’re alive,” he blurted.

“No thanks to Fisk,” Rogers replied with a grimace. 

“I saw you shot --” Stark ran a hand through his hair. “How?”

“The one day I turn out to be lucky, I guess.” Rogers drew a labored breath.

Stark reached out with a trembling hand, whether it was the lack of alcohol in his blood or something else, to touch Rogers’ arm. As if he still didn’t believe that Rogers was alive and breathing before him, that he wasn't passed out on the shop floor visited by some apparition. But Rogers’ arm was warm and solid under his fingertips, as real as anyone could ever be. He met Rogers’ eyes, now smiling at him.

“You came,” Rogers said, his voice full of fondness. 

“You thought I wouldn’t?” 

Rogers grew pensive, a slight frown on his lips and his brilliant eyes hooded. “I didn’t know -- I hoped --we’ve been friends since I got here. You’ve made this place a home for me when I was drifting and lost and wanting to be needed.”

Stark bit off the natural sarcastic response and felt a flutter in his heart and stomach that he hadn’t felt in years. Rogers’ belief in him made him want to run far, far away. He had done nothing for Rogers for Rogers to believe in him.

“Tony,” Rogers said softy. He put his hand over Stark’s. “It’s okay -- Natasha told me what happened, what you did when you thought I died.”

 _Tony_ echoed in his ears and heart. It was the most beautiful sound he’d heard in days. “I should mention how much that coffin and funeral cost me and where I should send the bill.” 

Rogers smiled back. Feeling bold, Stark ran a finger over his cheek, rough with stubble. Still warm, still alive. 

“Steve,” he murmured. “I can’t believe that you’re alive.”

“I shouldn’t be -- one bullet nearly lodged in my heart. Red Wolf’s people knew what to do.” 

Rogers pulled down his nightshirt. Stark stared at the red mark on Rogers’ chest and he traced the healing wound with a still trembling hand. “That’ll leave a scar.”

“I can’t complain -- I have worse elsewhere.”

Curiosity washed over Stark as he contemplated the other unknown scars. “I packed your things, but someone took them.”

Rogers grinned. “Sam and Nat decided to hide the trunk in case I pulled through. Butterscotch is around here somewhere too.” He folded his hand around Stark’s on his chest. “It’ll be all right, Tony. We’re going to beat them.”

“But you nearly died --”

“You sound like Bucky. I’ve nearly died many times. If I’m going to go, I want to go out fighting the good fight, fighting for people. Don’t you?”

Stark stared into the depths of Rogers’ sky blue eyes, his heart beating fast. “I prefer the option that involves living after the fight.” He shifted closer to Rogers.

“So do I,” Rogers said. “Tony.”

“Steve,” he breathed.

He never knew who kissed who first. In the end, it didn’t matter, as they crashed together in a desperate reunion. All Stark knew as he held Steve in his arms was that he was going to go down fighting next to a man he completely and utterly loved. He could feel the curl of Steve’s lips against him, Steve’s beating heart next to his, Steve’s breath hot on his neck, as they lay entwined. 

He had lost too much for one man and had been given back his future neatly gift-wrapped when he had not deserved the mercy. Even if he died at the end of Fisk’s gun barrel, he would have lived to see redemption and love, which was all a man could need in life. That, and the love of a good man.

~~~~~

Rogers asked them to wait until he was able to walk and ride on his own. He wanted, beyond anything else in the whole world, to be there to take down Fisk and his men. So Stark trained him to make caltrops and bullets and twist wire for the bombs while he regained his strength. 

At night, as Rogers slept, he refined his plans on the infernal machine he had been building to avenge Rogers. A suit of armor, in truth, inspired by all the tales of knights and King Arthur’s court he’d grown up on. 

The night before he had to return to Timely, against his better judgment, he laid down next to Rogers in the narrow bed when he could not longer keep his eyes open. Rogers put an arm around his shoulders and he put his head on Rogers’ shoulder. 

“I’ve been thinking, Tony,” Rogers said, running his fingers up and down Stark’s arm. “After all this, you and me, we should leave and go to San Francisco.”

“Assuming we live.”

“I have every confidence that we will live to see Fisk defeated. All of us.”

Stark guessed he had always known that Rogers could talk him into anything, even into a hopeless fight. He swallowed his self-doubt. “San Francisco?”

“I meant to go there when I left New York. But I got waylaid.” His fingers played with locks of Stark’s hair. 

“Anywhere to escape from Timely,” Stark replied. And anywhere with you, Steve, even if we end up in Alaska, he added silently.

~~~~~

Stark went back to Timely, threw out all the bottles and flasks he had in his shop, even the hidden ones, and threw himself into work like he needed to fix, invent, and machine for his life. The plans he had devised in Barton’s shack came to life under his hands. He had provided weapons for one war, but this was his war and he planned to fight.

He seethed quietly as he saw Fisk and his posse walk unmolested through town. But he bit his tongue, bided his time, and hammered his helmet into shape. When the sign came, he’d be ready.

The Roxxon company men, comfortable in their mining offices, never reported what happened to Mayor Fisk. No one would have believed it. They wrote about the dam and the unrest in town after the injury to the town sheriff in their reports. Ben Ulrich of the local paper wrote the most complete record of the fight to take down Fisk, but no one believed him.

The dam blew first. The sound of the explosion echoed in the mountains and water rushed down the Kirby River. Dr. Banner, eating lunch with Stark, asked, “What was that?”

The signal he’d been waiting for. Stark stood up and shook Dr. Banner’s hand. “It’s been nice knowing you, Bruce.”

He donned his armor and waited. Wilson was out in the town rounding up allies and friends, getting ready for the coming fight. Stark didn’t know who would join them. He didn’t care. He was going to fight at Steve’s side. 

Fisk had a routine, and at one o’clock that afternoon he was walking out of the bank and heading back to the casino. He didn’t know about the dam yet. Barton, Rogers’ guard on the roads, likely took out any Roxxon person who might carry the news. People probably assumed it was a mining problem, and when nothing came of it, they ignored it. 

Until Sheriff Rogers, Widow Barnes and Red Wolf rode fast into town shooting and hollering and ready to unleash unholy hell on Fisk and his henchmen. Stark, in his massive armor, walked heavily into the street, guns ablazing and shooting up anyone who dared to challenge him and his friends. 

Townspeople ran screaming from the main street to find shelter as Fisk and his henchmen tried to stand their ground. “I’m not being driven from Timely by a bunch of crazy people,” Fisk shouted at his men.

Stark strode towards the casino where Fisk was making his last stand. He could hear more than see Wilson, Miss Danvers, Pym and a host of others following him. Rogers rallied them, telling them where to stand and resist. Widow Barnes held nothing back as she unleashed her vengeance on the Roxxon men who took her husband’s life. Stark held the line, clearing paths for his friends as they circled the casino to pin down Fisk.

The henchmen fell one by one. Or ran for the hills like the cowards they were. Stark smiled with grim satisfaction when he passed Bullseye’s body in front of the casino. The man had shot Rogers and now had paid for it. Stark could see Fisk hiding in the casino and lifted his gun to aim at him.

Wilson rapped on the armor and pointed at Rogers, who had his own gun trained on Fisk. Stark stopped to watch. A man had the right to take his own revenge. And of all the crazy things that had happened that day, Fisk was by no means prepared to face the man he had tried to kill. 

Rogers shot his gun, Fisk dropped dead, and Timely was saved from a petty tyrant for yet another day.

“Good work,” Stark told Rogers as he took off his helmet.

A bloodied and dirt-covered Rogers nodded tightly. “It’d have been better without the bloodshed.” He wore his exhaustion plainly on his face as he surveyed the carnage.

“We survived, though,” Stark said. 

“That we did.”

~~~~~

Two months later, Stark tightened the screws on Miss Knight’s artificial arm. He’d always been inordinately proud of his invention and seeing the mechanical arm again sparked some thoughts about improvements. Miss Knight flexed her fingers. 

“It’s right as rain now,” she declared. “I don’t know what I’m going to do once you’re gone.”

“I’ll leave diagrams and instructions with Pym. He can fix it if you need a repair.” He put down the screwdriver in the toolbox he was taking with him.

“Not the same thing.” She stood up. “Thank you for everything, Mr. Stark. If it wasn’t for you and Mr. Rogers, we wouldn’t have our town back.”

“Thank you.” 

If anyone had told him a year ago that the good townspeople of Timely would beg for him to stay, he would have thought that person deluded. He shook Miss Knight’s hand. “Goodbye.”

He had melted down the armor from the gunbattle with Fisk, not wanting the suit to end up in Roxxon’s hands. Then he had sold everything for pennies to Pym, Rand and Williams, except for a toolbox filled with his best tools. He wasn’t a nostalgic man at all. But that toolbox had been a friend during his worst days, and he wasn’t about to leave it behind.

They had a train to catch at 2 o’clock that afternoon, assuming the good people of Timely let them go. Roxxon relented on some things, like not rebuilding the dam or hiring another tyrant like Fisk. But in the end, they still controlled the town and the state legislature, so their Timely victory remained small. To Roxxon’s credit, the local company representatives had pleaded with Rogers to remain sheriff.

“Ready, Tony?” Steve asked from the doorway. 

Stark preferred the civilian look on him, a hat and a dark blue coat that skimmed his body. He had already given the sheriff’s star to Red Wolf the day before. Red Wolf was the best choice, given that he showed promise to be a lawman much like Rogers. Widow Barnes was staying on to help him.

“As I’ll ever be. Sure about this, Steve?”

Rogers took his hand in his. “I meant what I said about heading out to San Francisco. That city has room enough for the both of us.”

Stark grinned and kissed a flustered Rogers on the cheek. “We'll just see about that.”


End file.
